Parking a link: the cost of “showrooming”

From today’s Tribune, a “human interest”-type article on a local store in a trendy Chicago neighborhood, specializing in selling attachment parenting and related articles for mothers.  They provided all manner of baby carriers, nursing bras, tops, and dresses, breast-feeding supplies, cloth diapers, and clothing made from organic fibers.  They offered classes in CPR, baby care, and yoga.  They spent time with their customers, helping them to find just the right carrier.

And they’re closing — because their customers, one after the next, took advantage of the staff’s willingness to help, to select a product, and then buy it online.  According to the owner, these customers weren’t even discreet about it.

 Some customers would spend an hour trying on baby carriers and wraps, only to then pull out their phones, scan the bar codes and shop online, sometimes even before leaving the store . . . .  [A] customer who had just finished a breast-feeding clinic was on her cellphone talking about a product, telling the person on the other end that she would get it online later for 50 cents cheaper.

 “I guarantee it wasn’t cheaper on Amazon. And let’s say it was. You were in the store. You had just taken a class that we don’t make any money on. That is a community service,” [owner Kathy Poehlmann] said.

Now, me personally, I don’t showroom.  I’m not saying this to be boastful, but it just doesn’t fit with the way I shop.  If I want something right away, I buy it right away.  If I’m not in a hurry, I’m more likely to research it online than in the store.  (So I suppose I’m guilty, potentially, of a different form of showrooming, in that I’ll look at multiple online sites for product information and buy based on the best price rather than the most informative site.)  Am I frugal?  Yes.  But that mostly takes the form of not buying very much to begin with.

Clearly it’s unethical to take a salesclerk or store owner’s time if you have no intention of making a purchase.  And presumably the people who do so think of themselves as, in fact, upstanding and morally upright.  Can they be shamed?  Or do people such as Poehlmann have to market themselves as consultants and charge an hourly fee?

Do you showroom?